Is there a methodology to select a reasonable threshold for copy number variation in a CNV (SNP array) TCGA dataset, to define when there is a significative alteration?
Can I download CNV data for normal samples and take the 95th percentile of distribution? Are there better methods?
Update
This is the percentiles plot of the two distribution (Tumor vs Normal) of values, for the same technology (SNP array) and the same genome (hg19).
The tumor distribution has slightly more extreme values, though it is not enough in my opinion. For this reason I think I should not use a percentile score (the 5th and the 95th percentile of the normal samples distribution, for instance) to define the thresholds to call CNV alterations in the tumor samples.